Former AAP leader and Punjabi singer Balkar Sidhu in Cong fold

Wednesday, 10/02/2016

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CHANDIGARH: Punjabi singer Balkar Sidhu on Tuesday joined the Congress after snapping ties with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Sidhu, 42, is from Bathinda and is a known singer and actor.

PPCC chief Captain Amarinder Singh with singer Balkar Sidhu at Punjab Congress Bhawan in Chandigarh on Tuesday.

Speaking on the occasion here, Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh dubbed the AAP slogan of ‘revolution’ as anti-national, accusing the party of resorting to “disruptive and destabilising tactics for shortterm political gains”.

Amarinder, who on Monday had accused the AAP of adopting “a Naxalist approach”, accused the party of circulating the pictures of slain militant leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale on social media, asking the party to come clean on his allegations.

Addressing the media, Amarinder said the AAP was circulating the posters carrying pictures of Bhindranwale, Arvind Kejriwal, Sucha Singh Chhotepur, Sanjay Singh and Bhagwant Mann, asking the people to celebrate Bhindranwale’s birth anniversary on February 12, by paying obeisance at the nearest gurdwaras.

Refer ring to the party’s invocation of inquilab (revolution) and attributing it to Bhagat Singh, Amarinder said, “Bhagat Singh raised the inquilab against the despotic foreign rule. Will the AAP clarify against whom they are raising the revolution.”

“On the one hand, they (AAP) are invoking people for ‘revolution’, and on the other, they are asking people to celebrate Bhindranwale’s birth anniversary. There is a clear link between the two,” Amarinder said, adding that such tactics are a threat to the country’s integration and “dangerous for Punjab”.

“The AAP seems to be going beyond even Simranjit Singh Mann’s Khalistan agenda,” he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Sidhu said the AAP was no more the party of aam aadmi.

The Punjabi singer-actor had earlier been in the AAP owing to his friendship with AAP MP Bhagwant Mann, and had even got the ticket to contest the 2014 Talwandi Sabo assembly bypoll, which was withdrawn later owing to allegations of human trafficking against him. A section had even underlined some of his songs that glorified alcohol.

He had later unsuccessfully contested as an Independent and was unhappy at the way the AAP had scrapped his ticket.

T his comes a day after Deepinder Dhillon and Harry Mann returned to the Congress from the SAD.

Balkar’s candidature in 2014 had been cancelled by the AAP after a woman journalist based in Toronto reportedly shot off a letter to AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, alleging that Sidhu had ruined a girl’s life in a human trafficking case.